Switch language by keyboard shortcut

I've installed the Japanese input method so I could type Japanese in my email.

My emails are always a mix of English and Japanese, so I need to switch back and forth both language usually. My trouble is every time I switched to Japanese, it's default to inputting English, so I need to grab my mouse and change the input mode to Hiragana before I could type Japanese. I had changed the default input mode to Hiragana but it still start from the English (Romanji) input mode.

I know how to switch from English to Japanese by pressing Alt + Shift, but once I'm in Japanese, does someone knows how to change the input mode from Romanji to Hiragana?

| Hi,| | I've installed the Japanese input method so I could type Japanese in my | email.| | My emails are always a mix of English and Japanese, so I need to switch back | and forth both language usually. My trouble is every time I switched to | Japanese, it's default to inputting English, so I need to grab my mouse and | change the input mode to Hiragana before I could type Japanese. I had | changed the default input mode to Hiragana but it still start from the | English (Romanji) input mode.| | I know how to switch from English to Japanese by pressing Alt + Shift, but | once I'm in Japanese, does someone knows how to change the input mode from | Romanji to Hiragana?| | Thanks.

Essentially once the Japanese keyboard is selected (through Alt-Shift, e.g.) you can change the input mode to hiragana by pressing Ctrl-CapsLock. That just goes TO hiragana; i.e. it's not a toggle. And through experimentation I just found that Alt-CapsLock goes to katakana.

And he says that Shift-CapsLock goes to half-width alphanumeric. I found if you do that, and then Alt-CapsLock, you get half-width katakana. So the only mode left undiscovered is full-width alphanumeric, but that's ugly as heck anyway so who cares?

Shift + capslock seems to have helped go from English to Hiragana on 64bit Windows 7 Ultimate.

Does anyone know if it's possible if I could set Hiragana to load by default when going into Japanese mode? It makes no sense to me that English is being loaded by default as I've just changed from English mode over.